From The Armies and Enemies of Imperial Rome by Phil Barker:
"The backbone of the Roman army throughout its varied history was the Legio, a large body of drilled infantry mainly or at times entirely trained for close combat. Its men differed from the close combat infantry of such other nations such as the Greeks, Carthaginians, or Macedonians in that their primary weapon was not a long spear or longer pike retained in the hand to thrust, but instead a combination of hand hurled missles and sword...the missle weapon was the Pilum, a heavy short ranged weapon hurled just before contact..."
After researching a bit about my Early Imperial Roman army (25 BC-197 AD), I decided two things: That I would paint my Roman Legio (Latin for military levy, or "legion") like the two imposing men in the picture above, and that there was absolutely no way I would be able to create that level of detail on their shields; 15mm is just too dang small, and my brush technique is not at that level yet. I decided that I would be happy with a red shield with a bronze border and some yellow lines, letting the imagination fill out the rest of the details. After all, these figures will be used on the gaming table, seen from a distance-- not in a museum display case. Now that they are done, I will more than likely work on the Auxilia portion of the army next. So, without further adieu, here is a bit of the process of getting these guys done.
After priming them all with Chaos Black, I painted in a row all their flesh, then red clothing and shields, followed by armor, and finally fine details such as sandals, bronze outlines, small leather straps, and pilums.
Here's the shield design I was talking about. You get the idea.
primed it black, then slapped on some green paint, static grass,
and little bits of gravel.
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